Paulo Freire's pedagogy was developed in reaction to the state of "periphery" of illiterate farmers in Brazil and Chile. However, his thinking, which illuminated capitalism's oppressive nature in the classrooms, was enthusiastically accepted in the "centre" and he became a global point of reference for social action. In this…

It is often assumed that the academic genres taught by EAP specialists at universities are fixed and stable, provide easily accessible exemplars for student writers and feature in programmes running prior or parallel to the students' courses. This paper describes a collaborative writing initiative in which these assumptions were challenged. A…

Five years ago, few would have predicted that expenditures for public education would be at the same levels, or perhaps even lower, particularly with growing numbers of "at-risk" students, rising accountability benchmarks, and a nationwide challenge of aging buildings and infrastructure. Yet, in these grim economic times, quality classroom…

Retaining early career teachers and enticing promising teachers to become teacher leaders are issues of international interest not only because large numbers of teachers will retire from the profession over the next five to 10 years but also because the strongest teachers are the teachers most likely to leave the profession during their early…

This paper reports on a research case study into a form of mentoring for teachers in higher education in Ireland with 30 academic staff. It begins with an exploration of the concept and practice of mentoring in the world of higher education professional development; focus will be limited to an overview of the concept of teacher mentoring, an…

One way to meet the unique challenges in diverse classrooms is co-teaching. Friend and Cook (2010) described co-teaching as an approach that provides specialized services to individual students in a general education classroom. Specifically, co-teaching involves two or more educators working collaboratively to deliver instruction to a…

Teacher study groups are often thought to be effective professional development structures. Such teacher communities may foster teacher learning through a collaborative culture and the codification of group members' collective knowledge. However, not all study groups are effective professional development. This article is a discussion of factors…

This paper summarises the implications for practice arising from the "International review of the evidence on best practice in educational provision for children on the autism spectrum" and it focuses on key priorities for policy makers, families, practitioners and researchers. Findings highlight that there is little evidence to indicate…

Using critical ethnography guided by cultural sociology, this paper examines the role of "co" in teacher education; coresearching, coteaching, and cogenerating dialogue. The authors are a pre-service teacher and a college instructor, and through our multiple perspectives and positionings, we explore how collaboration served to dismantle…

This paper looks at how a series of conversations contributed to the development of a newly formed role at the University of Victoria--Teaching Assistant Consultants (TACs). TACs act as departmental mentors for teaching assistants (TAs) in their respective departments, charged with providing support in the form of discipline-specific workshops…

Everyone benefits when teachers share their "best practice" ideas with one another; novice and seasoned teachers alike are delighted to add successful lessons to their repertoire. Besides giving teachers something tried and true to work with, successful lesson plans help teachers reflect upon what makes an approach to language teaching effective…

Guided inquiry is an instructional technique that requires students to answer a teacher-proposed research question, design an investigation, collect and analyze data, and then develop a conclusion (Bell, Smetana, and Binns 2005; NRC 2000). In this article, the authors describe a guided-inquiry lesson developed through the lesson-study process…

Marilyn Johnston-Parsons writes about collaboration. She describes several university-school collaborations with which she has been involved in terms of the tensions and the dialogue that has been associated with them. While she worries about the state of collaboration in this educational age, she admits to "cautious optimism" that more…

NSTA initiated the student chapter program in 2001 to help preservice science teachers at universities and colleges gain access to professional development opportunities and provide support as they enter the profession. Here the authors share examples of how a student chapter contributes to professional development of preservice teachers and…

In the years since the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) focused on the success of Japanese students, much has been written about Japanese lesson study and its possible benefits for mathematics classrooms in America. Lesson study is a professional development process used in Japanese schools that brings teachers (and other…